A few months ago I spent time training some telephone sales
agents who were new to selling. They’d mainly been involved
with handling incoming calls but now their company needed
them to do some out bound sales calls. I spent two days
running a sales workshop for them and another three days
coaching them on the job.
The biggest challenge I had was trying to stop them selling.
Or at least their idea of what selling is all about.
Many people who are new to sales and also some experienced
sales people want to keep talking about their product or
service. They open the conversation with one or two general
questions which are often irrelevant to the customer and
then launch into their sales spiel.
What then happens is that the customer thinks “Oh no, I’m
being sold to” and immediately disengages the brain and
stops listening. The sales person then has limited success
as far as getting a sale is concerned.
My job with these people was to try to get them to stop
selling as they knew it. The most important thing in any
sales call is to find out what the customer’s needs are. The
customer won’t readily tell you what his or her real needs
are so the sales person needs to do some careful probing.
Questions need to be asked that are relevant to the
customer’s needs and relevant to your product or service.
It is often useful to open an outbound sales call with the
question “Mr Customer I’m not sure whether we can help you
or not, however I would like to ask one or two questions
which will establish whether our product would meet your
needs and benefit your business, is that OK?”
This statement is perfectly true because, you don’t know if
your product or service will benefit the customer until you
ask him or her some questions about their business. It will
also have the effect of relaxing the customer if they feel
they’re not being sold to and that someone is interested and
cares about their situation. If the customer believes this
then closing the sale becomes so much easier.
Discover how you can generate more business without having
to cold call!
Alan Fairweather is the author of “How to get More Sales
without Selling” This book is packed with practical things
that you can do to get customers to come to you.
Click here now:
